Scottish home stops taking Irish teens

A SCOTTISH facility for seriously troubled youths which had previously taken referrals from the HSE is no longer going to do so as it needs the beds for its own young people.

Leading child lawyer Catherine Ghent said that the Kibble Institute in Scotland, which is currently looking after two young Irish people, will not be available as an option for under-pressure services anymore.

The unit took children in need of secure care, for whom no places were available in Ireland due to the serious nature of their troubles, or when they had exhausted all options here.

Ms Ghent said Ireland should not be “exporting” its most vulnerable children but should work to develop proper services nationally. She said that, yet again, at present the waiting lists for secure care, even before the closing of the Scottish option, exceed beds available.

“These are children who are deemed to pose such a severe risk to their own life and welfare, they require to be detained for their own safety,” she said.

Children are placed in a special care unit under a High Court detention order. There are three such units in Ireland: Ballydowd in Dublin, Gleann Alainn in Cork and Coovagh House in Limerick.

Due to the pressures on the HSE’s own secure care services, young people are being placed in private residential care centres — or indeed sent to facilities in other countries.

For example, at the end of April in the HSE South, six young people were in special care, which requires a court order, and 13 were in high support care, the next level down.

Of those 13, eight were in private placements.

As revealed in the Irish Examiner earlier this year, more than €2.3 million was spent last year on placing 15 troubled young people in special care facilities and private foster care outside the country.

Among the most extreme and expensive were placements in:

* Boystown, Nebraska in the US, for specialist therapeutic care at €356,000 annually.

* A placement in Britain for severe attachment diso- rder at €240,000 annually.

* Secure care in Scotland at a cost of €541,300 annually.

* And a specialist therapeutic care placement in Hassela Gotland, Sweden, at an annual cost of €140,000.